The Store That Would Not Stay Down
Ballantynes opened on Cashel Street in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 1854, and has remained family-owned across more than a century and a half in a retail category — the department store — that has quietly disappeared from most of the rest of the world.
The store's survival has not been a matter of simply avoiding trouble. The 1947 Ballantynes fire killed 41 people and later prompted changes to New Zealand fire-service management, building codes and commercial safety. The store rebuilt. In 2011 the Christchurch earthquake badly damaged its city-centre premises; Ballantynes closed for eight months, continued trading through other channels and reopened on Cashel Street that October.
Today the store carries designer fashion, beauty and homewares across its central premises, with a second branch in Timaru — a genuinely old, genuinely independent department store still trading at a scale most of its international peers gave up decades ago, in a city that has twice given it real reason to close for good.
Surviving two civic disasters sixty-four years apart is more than a retail anecdote. Ballantynes' history includes loss, rebuilding and a continuing commitment to Christchurch's city centre.
Article references
The houses in this story
- Ballantynes Cashel Street, City Centre
Founded in 1854, this family-owned Christchurch department store on Cashel Street carries designer fashion, beauty, and homewares across its central premises and a Timaru branch. It rebuilt after the 1947 fire and the 2011 earthquakes to remain one of New Zealand's few surviving independent department stores. store page → · open in the atlas →